The NY Times is carrying an op-ed of Mustafa Barghouthi wherein he argues that the time has come for the Palestinian Authority to declare unilateral statehood based on the entirety of the lands captured by the Israelis in the Six Days War.
The only way to save the two-state solution is for the Palestinians to declare the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and to demand that the world community recognize it and its borders — as it did in the case of Kosovo.
That would also mean supporting the right of Palestinians to struggle nonviolently to end the occupation of their state. Any future negotiations, therefore, would not be about the right of the Palestinians to have their own sovereign independent state, but rather about how to apply and implement that right.
This would be the true test of the state-building strategy of the United States and the donor community. It would be the real instrument to finally demarcate the difference between support for free Palestinian institutions in a sovereign and viable state, or footing the bill of occupation and using E.U. and U.S. tax dollars to maintain under various guises what will never amount to anything but an apartheid system denying Palestinians their human and national rights.
If the world community turns its back on such a declaration of independence by using the well-worn and insulting argument that every step should first be verified with the Israeli government, then the message will be clear: Peace based on two states is no longer an option.
There is a distinct aspect to this kind of airy-fairy-pie-in-the-sky-quality to Barghouthi’s unilateral declaration of statehood which I find particularly intriguing – if only for the complete and utter disregard he holds for the nearly half a million Israelis who currently live (and often work) within the disputed territories. Any unilateral declarations of statehood the Palestinian Authority make which fails to account for or take proper notice and/or consideration for this group – needs to have their ideas summarily dismissed outright and not published in the NY Times.
Is there anything more inciteful than a Jew who fights back and refuses to lay down and die without a fight? Jerusalem Post:
The security guard was driving alone in a security vehicle on his way to a settler home when residents blocked the street with trash cans and began hurling rocks at him. The guard, fearing for his life, then allegedly opened fire with his personal firearm at a group of rock throwers and killed a resident. Police found two knives and screwdriver on the body of the victim who had a previous criminal history and was known to police.
The security guard was arrested and taken for investigation by the police. After the incident, riots broke out in the village as youths took to the streets to protest the incident. Police and Border Police fired tear gas and flash grenades at protesters who threw rocks and molotov cocktails at security forces
Who targets daycare centers as part of ‘resistance’ or ‘liberation’ in the name of freedom from oppression? Ha’aretz:
A mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip exploded between two day-care centers in a community in the southern region of Sha’ar Hanegev on Wednesday morning. No one was hurt but some property damage was reported. Witnesses reported that there were no children in the buildings when the shell exploded, only teachers. The early warning system in the community failed to alert of the incoming shell, channel 10 reported.
Less than 24 hours after the Israeli Prime Minister left Israel to go the United States to participate in the ongoing peace talks four Israeli civilians were murdered in an ambush as they drove on highway 60 outside the Hebron area.
Their deaths were inevitable. It is a cycle, a pattern, we have seen it play out over and over again as peace negotiations begin. Every time it happens, there are official announcements from all interested parties that the participants will not let these deaths deter them from continuing negotiations which lead nowhere quickly.
Why this time should be different from any other talks when the Palestinian leadership is represented by the weakest leader the PLO has ever produced, a leadership camp which fractured and fraught with competing and conflicted interests should produce a different result than all the other xxx times peace talks have commenced; beyond my ability to engage in irrationality. And the Americans this time around are no better. Ynet News is quoting US Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Crowley as saying:
“We also are cognizant that there may well be actors in the region who are deliberately making these kinds of attacks in order to try to sabotage the process,” he said.
All of which goes to prove he just doesn’t get it. These aren’t actors, actors pretend to kill people, but are instead Israel’s neighbours and alleged peace partners except they are not prime for peace but war.
As a show of …good faith – the Palestinian Authority has rounded up 200 suspected Hamas members in the West Bank. Personally, given the area and its’ history, I would suggest rounding up the Palestinian security forces for interrogation would be a far more fruitful endeavour for appending the murderers. Colour me cynical, but using the ambush as a pretext for jailing one’s political proponents doesn’t strike me as taking one for Team Justice and Peace.
Ha’aretz is reporting Labor Minister of Defense Ehud Barak is suggesting Israel is willing to cede part of Jerusalem ahead of negotiations – and this after the murder of four Israelis. It just might be in Israel’s best interest to cede Barak to the Palestinians instead. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
Years ago there was quite a popular book making the rounds of pop culture which was based on the premise that everything which was necessary for the socialization process was learned in kindergarten. Obviously, the premise is simplistic and trite but I do believe there are individuals who never grow out of behaviour patterns which are set early in life.
I had three children in under four years, so between the oldest and the youngest there is merely three years gap between the oldest and youngest child. One of the things that surprised me the most was the truly competitive nature each of my children and how it coloured their perceptions of each other from the get-go. Not just in the obvious ways at home, in sports or at school but it was an all pervasive game of perpetual one-up-manship. Each child instinctively saw ‘the other’ sibling as out to get them.
If my daughter tripped or stumbled while walking close to one of her brothers she immediately blamed one which ever one of the boys she held a grudge against at that given moment for causing her to stumble or trip. In fact, on many occasions I had to point out the ‘other siblings’ weren’t even within the immediate vicinity of where she was when the accident occurred. Eventually, with time, maturity and logic I was able to win everyone over to the idea – that some accidents or injury can be isolated and random and can occur without a human motivational trigger.
I do believe that some people never learn fully grasp this concept which brings me to the case of Emily Henochowicz. Her name is probably completely unknown to most of my readers or most North Americans but she has become a potent poster-girl symbol to the International Solidarity Movement and like-wise sojourners. Ha’aretz tells the story rather well even if the full article is deeply biased.
The Israeli government is refusing to pay the cost of medical care for an American-Jewish activist who lost an eye when Border Police officers fired a tear gas canister at her during a demonstration. Emily Henochowicz, who studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and also holds Israeli citizenship, took part in a protest on May 31, shortly after Israel killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Dozens of activists took part in the protest against the Israeli blockade of Gaza next to the Qalandia checkpoint, south of Ramallah. According to the IDF, demonstrators began to throw stones at the Border Police, after which the army responded by firing tear gas canisters.
According to Henochowicz, one policeman shot a canister directly at her face, shattering her jaw and causing her to lose her left eye. A Haaretz reporter witnessed the incident. Following her her treatment at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Henochowicz’s father, who had traveled from the U.S., was handed a bill for NIS 14,000. Under advice from his lawyer, Michael Sfard, he asked the Defense Ministry cover the expense, but officials refused.
In justifying the refusal, the Defense Ministry claimed the tear gas was not fired directly at Henochowicz. “The canister ricocheted at her after it rebound off a concrete barrier and changed direction – it was not shot directly at her,” the ministry said in a statement drafted by lawyer Sharon Zimmerman. The statement also accused Henochowicz of putting herself at risk by voluntarily participating in a breach of the peace.
Now in Henochowicz’s world, the Israel security forces represent the ultimate in evil inclinations and she a moral duty to confront what she perceives as the injustice behind checkpoints used against her chosen people; the Palestinians.
Unlike others, I won’t ascribe Henochowicz’s beliefs as ‘deliberate lies’ but a failure of perspective. The fact she was peacefully participating in a demonstration which turned violent against the Israeli security forces is what led directly to her being accidentally injured cannot be a random event according to her lexicon of beliefs. The attack had to be deliberate and personal because the forces of ‘evil’ were involved rather than the far more logical and rational conclusion; which was her injury resulted by at the wrong place at the wrong time. Think I am wrong? Well there is always the CCTV footage of the event.
Although, I do understand where Henochowicz gets it from as her father appears to suffer from the same inadequacies of maturity which just proves that social dysfunction is just not a generational thing.
It is very difficult to understand much of anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if your primary news source is the NY Times. Case in point this NY Times report of an incident involving the Israeli Border police and a Palestinian. The headline reads: Police kill a Palestinian Driver
JERUSALEM — Israeli border police officers fatally shot a Palestinian man in the contested East Jerusalem area on Friday after he hit them with his car, the Israeli police said, although the exact circumstances remained unclear.
A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said that two border police officers were lightly injured after being hit by the car in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Joz and that the police were studying whether the driver had hit them deliberately. The driver was shot after he fled the car on foot and ignored calls by the police to stop.
Actually, the exact circumstances surrounding the shooting appear quite clear to me and can be found at the Israeli Leftie daily Ynet News:
Four Border Guard officers were lightly injured Friday after being run over by a Palestinian driving a pickup truck in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz. The driver was shot, and quickly died of his wounds. His body was later snatched from the hospital and he was buried at a cemetery near Temple Mount.
After the incident, the assailant attempted to escape by foot and was shot by a Border Guard force stationed in the area. He was critically wounded and died shortly afterwards. Police suspect the incident was nationalistically motivated.
According to an initial investigation, the Palestinian spotted Border Guard officers arriving at the neighborhood following warnings of upcoming riots. Soldiers belonging to a Border Guard training base were walking single file when the driver began speeding and driving towards them.
Some of the policemen managed to jump to the side, but four of them were hit by the vehicle and evacuated to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital. The company commander began chasing the assailant, who tried to flee the scene. According to the police, he was shot after failing to obey the police’s call to stop.
The driver was evacuated by the Red Crescent to the al-Maqasid Hospital in east Jerusalem. Another passenger who was in the car with him was apparently injured by stones hurled at the road earlier and was evacuated to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital. The police are looking into his version that the driver who ran over the officers was trying to evacuate him to receive medical treatment.
Now the only thing which is not clear is whether the injured Palestinian passenger in the car is telling the truth or not in regards to the driver’s motives. After all, he’s suffering from a head injury which he got at a rock throwing protest against the Israelis. Be that as it may what is quite clear is this – if you use your vehicle to run over 4 border police in Israel the Border police tend to preceive such actions as a personal intent to kill rather than just reckless and negliant operation of a motor vehicle.
My hasbara credentials should be readily apparent for even the most casual readers so what I want to say might strike some as odd but there is a Hello Uncle Erwin letter allegedly written by Amir – an Israeli naval commando who claims to have first hand knowledge of the attempted lynching on the Mavi Marmara in the flotilla of fools making the rounds of the blogsphere. And I quote:
“Hello Uncle Erwin,
This is Amir writing you after reading what you sent to my father, Eitan. As you know, it was my unit and my friends who were on the ship. My commander was injured badly as a result of the “pacifists” violence. I want to tell you how he was injured so you could tell the story. it shows just how horrible and inhuman were the activists. My commander was the first soldier that rappelled down from the helicopter to the ship. When he touched ground, he got hit in the head with a pole and stabbed in the stomach with a knife.
When he drew out his secondary weapon-a handgun (his primary weapon was a regular paintball gun: “Tippman 98 custom”) he was shot in the leg. He managed to fire a single shot before he was tossed from the balcony by 4 Arab activists, to the lower deck (a 12 feet fall). He was then dragged by other activists to a room in the lower deck were he was stripped down by 2 activists. They took off his vest, helmet and shirt, leaving him with only his pants and shoes on. When they finished they took a knife and expanded the wound he already had in his stomach. They cut his ab muscles horizontally and by hand spilled his guts out. When they finished they raised him up and walked him on the deck outside. He was conscious the whole time. If you are asking yourself why they did all that, here comes the reason. They wanted to show the soldiers their commander’s body so they will be demoralized and scared. Luckily, when they walked him on the deck a soldier saw him and managed to shoot the activist that was walking him down the outside corridor. He shot him with a special non-lethal bullet that didn’t kill him. My commander managed to jump from the deck to the water and swim to an army rescue boat (his guts still out of his body, and now in salty sea water). That was how he was saved. The activists that did this to him are alive, now in Turkey, and treated as heroes.
I’m sorry if I described this with too many details, but I thought it was necessary for the credibility. Please tell this story to anyone who will listen. I think that these days you are one of Israel’s best spokesman.
Thanks uncle Erwin, Shabbat shalom!
Amir
Gruesome,nu? There is no shortage of barbarism in the world – decades before the Chen-chen’s thought of Beslan; the Palestinians had already carried out Ma’alot. I remember very clearly what occurred under the Ramallah sun which began in the Palestinian Authority police station, but more importantly, I remember clearly and how badly – it ended for the two IDF reservists.
What happened on the Mavi Marmara wasn’t pretty by anyone’s standards but I remain highly skeptical of this account and believe its the work of a Hasbarist run amuk. I admit the writer had me right up until the jump. Why? Well, quite frankly, I have seen individuals with intestinal injuries of the sort where the bowels are hanging outside the body. No one so injured in such a manner as described would be able to swim to safety. Shock is the body’s instinctive response to sever trauma and it shuts the down all but the most basic levels in literally minutes. Swimming requires a complex coordination of not only the body but the mind. The mind might be willing but the nature of shock would have shut down all cooperation within the body. Somebody has spent too much time watching re-runs of Die Hard and such like movies.
I have no idea who started this chain email which is now being posted on blog’s all over the world as the G-d’s honest truth. There might even be elements of truth intertwined within the tale the letter writer tells but the letter is a lie and a fake. And a lie is a lie and serves no one well. There are enough lies already told in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to keep historians busy for the next ten generations that we do not need to add more to it. The truth, simple and unadorned, should suffice.
To the bloggers who are swept up in this and who have an invested interest in promoting this letter as truth on your blog I suggest that you remember – it is your ability to think critically and pause before you hit the publish button on your blog that separates you from animals who react to any stimuli from pure instinct alone.
There is one thing about the Helen Thomas meltdown which I think needs to be implicitly pointed out. Thomas made those statements pre-flotilla outrage. It wasn’t in the heat of anger and it came during the US White House celebrating Jewish heritage month. I think a little of my grandfather’s wisdom is in order – what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh and now we all know what fills Helen’s marrow.
I wanted to post this article from Arutz Sheva before Friday night but I ran out of time. I suppose I could have done it yesterday but I was being held hostage to the washer/dryer/stove and floors in the kitchen. The farmers of Gush Katif are being sued by their former Palestinian employees for dismissal indemnities and other employee benefits available to them as if they remained under the employment standards of Israeli law. The implications of this situation will continue to ripple outward and will loom large if there is every a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians and Israelis which involves the removal of any Israeli citizens from their homes.
What began several months ago as two “test case” lawsuits against a handful of farmers has swarmed into a deluge of over 80 lawsuits, with claims totaling hundreds of millions of shekels. Aharon Hazut, coordinator of the Gush Katif Farmers’ Lobby, told Israel National News that the Knesset Audit Committee has taken up the cause and will meet with the appropriate government figures – but that no answer should be expected in the coming days.
The Gush Katif Committee and the Gush Katif Farmers Knesset Lobby are trying to fight back by raising funds for their legal defense. “We requested that the government find proper solutions for this issue and bear the responsibility for the consequences of the dismissal of the Arab workers following the expulsion,” Hazut said. “In the meantime, however, the farmers are required to respond to the plaintiffs complains within weeks. They need to appoint lawyers, file countersuits, and the like, and it is a costly endeavor. We desperately need NIS 250,000 ($65,000) immediately to help pay part of the farmers’ huge expenses to lawyers!”
The question is whether the government will step in and assume responsibility for the Arab workers whose jobs disappeared together with the liquidation of the Jewish presence in Gaza. “So far the government has not offered to help at all,” Hazut said, “and some of the farmers have already had liens placed on their property because of the suits against them. MK Zevulun Orlev, who chairs the Knesset committee, as well as MKs Uri Ariel, Ze’ev Elkin and others, are taking this very seriously and are helping us – but so far there have been no results.”
“We were not the ones to dismiss our workers,” Hazut said. “The government did – and fired us together with them! The situation of my former Arab workers is even better than mine; they at least still live in their homes, whereas I have been living for the last five years in a ‘transit camp.’” Hazut said that of the 400 farmers in Gush Katif, “only 39 have returned to work. Another 80 or so have found other types of work – but 70% of them are still unemployed! At age 50 and up, who can expect people who know only farming to find some other type of work? They’re looking and they’re trying, they volunteer with the police or learn in a Kollel – but they need work!”
Did I mention that five years later all claims for compensation from the Gush Katif refugees have yet to be paid out in full or the fact a substantial number have yet to receive permanent housing? The one thing the Arutz Sheva report doesn’t tell us is who are the Israeli lawyers who are filing suit on their behalf. Frankly, I would be surprised not to learn that any of the Israeli lawyers involved in this suit weren’t tied to Peace Now or the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Then there is the government’s silence on this issue which is perhaps understandable – given that if the Israeli government settles these claims, it sets a bad precedent. Remember, this represents the forcible removal of less than 10,000 Israelis just image the costs if the Israeli government under took to force the removal from the West Bank which would number anywhere from 50-80,000 people from their homes and businesses.
Then there is Iran. It is like the dogs of war are gathering for a perfect storm.
I have been informed I’m being a little uhm…harsh. Normally, I would just shuck it off but it comes from someone whose opinion I value so I gave it a little thought. I suggest you put it down to my inner Jew/Russian-Israeli/Judeo-Nazi. Mostly, why I am reacting the way I am is because I remember Jenin and the terrible aftermath in the media and with government after government condemning the Israelis over the alleged massacre which turned out to be nothing more than a shoot-out between IDF soldiers and a group of hard core terrorists.
In fact, I remember watching Larry King who gave an entire show over to the rantings of Queen Jordan who proclaimed the number of those murdered by the IDF was in the thousands. At the end of the brouhaha, the count of the dead numbered approximately 75 and came down to 23 for the IDF and 52 Palestinian. If the IDF was the force for nefariousness which its strident critics suggest it is; a well aimed missile would have taken out the lot without the shedding of a single IDF soldier’s blood. It was insistence of the IDF command to go in and fight house-to-house in the hopes of preserving civilian lives which was the path which lead to the death of IDF deaths.
The Jerusalem Post carries an interview with two of the naval commandos but I am going to quote from a small part near the end. I suggest you read it all and see how it jibs.
Based on preliminary results of its investigation into the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, which ended with nine dead passengers and more than 30 wounded, the IDF said on Thursday that the commandos were attacked by a well-trained group of mercenaries, most of whom were found without IDs but with thousands of dollars in their pockets.
The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20 mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of the mercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades. The IDF’s understanding is that the mercenaries mainly chose dual-purpose items of this sort rather than guns, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear that they were terrorists and not so-called peace activists.
Nevertheless, the IDF suspects that the group did have some guns of its own. Israeli forensic experts who examined the ship found casings belonging to a weapon that was not used by the commandos, and the Turkish captain of the ship later told the IDF that the “mercenaries” threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.
I would like to point out that the IDF mission, while regrettable that the commandos were injured and lives were lost, did not fail. The IDF’s mission was to stop the flotilla which it did. While there are those who will protest that the successful mission was a public relations disaster and a screw up of nearly biblical proportions I would like to point out the knee-jerk quality and mass hysteria of the criticism which came immediately and without even the merest examination of the evidence. I would say this suggests that any Israeli action would have been met with the same mass hysteria and the baying for Israeli blood. The world only likes and revers dead Jews.
Like it, love it, or hate it; Israel is not like any other nation.
Yes, those spunky humanitarians are at it again. The Jerusalem Post:
Hamas’s security forces on Monday and Tuesday raided the offices of several non-governmental organizations in the Gaza Strip and confiscated equipment and furniture, drawing sharp condemnations from human rights groups.
The sources said the raids were carried out by agents belonging to Hamas’s Internal Security apparatus without court permission. Hamas spokesmen in the Gaza Strip on Thursday refused to comment on the raids.
After conducting a thorough search of the offices of the organizations, the Hamas security agents confiscated files, documents, computers, fax machines and other equipment. The agents also informed the managers and workers of the organizations of the Hamas government’s decision to close them down indefinitely. The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights expressed outrage over the raids and called on the Hamas government to open an investigation.
“Al-Mezan condemns these assaults against NGOs and views them with much concern,” the center said. “Al-Mezan calls on the Gaza government to initiate an investigation into these acts, ensure full respect of the law, and protect the right of NGOs to work freely.”
According to affidavits given to Al-Mezan by workers at the NGOs, on Monday morning Hamas security agents stormed the NGOs offices in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. The NGOs raid on Monday were: Sharik Youth Institution, Bonat Al-Mustaqbal (Future Builders) Society, the South Society for Women’s Health, and the Women and Children Society.
The security agents searched the offices and made a list of the equipment and other belongings. Later in the day, Hamas policemen returned to the offices of the same NGOs and called the directors by telephone. They confiscated most of the equipment and other items, including computers, faxes, cameras, documents and reports, in addition to the keys to their doors. The security agents informed the directors that their organizations were closed. They did not provide any reasons behind this decision.
The following day [Tuesday], Hamas security men stormed the offices of another two NGOs, the Palestinian Mini Parliament and the National Reconciliation Committee. They confiscated the keys to their doors and ordered them closed.
